raiders014_db.jpg
Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis yells encouragement to players during warm-up drills game at Network Associates Coliseum. 8/8/03 in Oakland.
DARRYL BUSH / The Chronicle Al Davis has built his stake in the Raiders to the point that he owns 37 percent of the voting stock in the team. Photo caption <137,,>ratto16_ph<252>1060214400<252>The Chronicle<252>raiders014_db.jpg_Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis yells encouragement to players during warm-up drills game at Network Associates Coliseum._ 8-8-03 in Oakland._DARRYL BUSH - The Chronicle__CAT O SALES-MAGS OUT<137><252> Al Davis has built his stake in the Raiders to the point that he owns 37 percent of the actual stock in the team. Photo caption <137,,>onthenflsky23_PH<252>1060214400<252>The Chronicle<252>raiders014_db.jpg_Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis yells encouragement to players during warm-up drills game at Network Associates Coliseum._ 8-8-03 in Oakland._DARRYL BUSH - The Chronicle__Al Davis has built his stake in the Raiders to the point that he owns 37 percent of the voting stock in the team. ___Photo caption <137,,>ratto16_ph<252>1060214400<252>The Chronicle<252>raiders014_db.jpg_Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis yells encouragement to players during warm-up drills game at Network Associates Coliseum._ 8-8-03 in Oakland._DARRYL BUSH - The C

Barring a late burst of sense trumping ambition, or a secret candidate nobody knows, Kansas City offensive coordinator Al Saunders is likely to be named the next Norval Turner. It won't happen right away, because Al Davis likes to wait until the other NFL coaching vacancies have been filled and any potential candidates are out of leverage.

And allowing for the slim possibility that it might be Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt instead of Saunders, the salient fact remains the same: Al works the way he has always worked, with half an eye toward watching the outside world tie itself in cerebral knots trying to figure him out, another half an eye on the contract (he likes his coaches lean and hungry, financially speaking), and the other eye on the new coach knowing his place. Davis is not what you would call a habitual risk-taker when it comes to picking a coach.

Though it is true that Saunders, or Whisenhunt for that matter, would not be a popular choice (too much the NFL apparatchik, as Turner was), he isn't playing to the crowd, not if he wants to succeed. He needs to make clear only that he can make himself clear, that he is not only capable of independent thought but can make some space for himself amid the grim vortex that is the Raiders' organizational chart.

He can start, for example, with his opening news conference, by not referring to Al as "Mr. Davis," but as, well, "Al."

And no, we are not asking Saunders to refer to himself in the third person. There's already way too much of that happening.

Rather, the Saunders figure needs to create the illusion (if not the reality) that The First Al is more akin to an equal and less to the grand high imperial mystic ruler of Raider World.

Does he have a legitimate chance of doing this? Of course not. In fact, Saunders is considered by dispassionate outsiders the type of safe (read: non-dynamic) choice who knows that this is the last go-round for him as a head coach.

Still, he has to try to show that he isn't afraid to run afoul of Al, which is a tricky bit of business given that it smacks of instant mutiny, always a bad idea.

The safest way to introduce this idea is not to go right to the abjectly deferential "Mr. Davis," even if Al likes the sound of the honorific. Saunders is 58 years old, soon to be 59, and he has been around the NFL long enough (23 seasons as a coach) to be able to call the boss by his first name in public.

This alone won't make Saunders the bold independent thinker he needs to be, but it will give the impression that he wasn't hired merely to beat the Chiefs, a standard of performance that proved an extraordinary hurdle for Turner and his predecessor, Bill Callahan, to name two men who used "Mr. Davis" rather than "Al."

This seems like a small thing, true. In fact, it is downright infinitesimal. But hey, this Raiders coaching watch tends to burn a lot of time without much actual news. I mean, take the Pat Hill thing: One day, we're all running with the Fresno State coach as though he were the next bold idea bursting from Al's massive brain, and the next, his message queue has one "Pick up the dry cleaning" from his wife.

All we learned from that little lack of exchange is that senior personnel executive Mike Lombardi isn't quite as influential with Al as we thought.

Either way, the Hill sidebar was a wacky little diversion, but in the end, we still ended up the way we always end up with the Raiders -- waiting on Al to play it safe.

And safe is hiring Al Saunders.

But Al Saunders can't stay safe, and the sooner he establishes that he is capable of independent thought, the better chance he has of beating everyone's expectations.

Because the soonest he can do that is the introductory news conference ... that's where we get to the "Al" part.

The best part of this advice is that it can work for anyone Al decides to hire. It just happens to work best with Saunders, because if he does get the job and he hears, "Nothing happens with the Raiders unless Al says it does," he can pretend he's the Al.